by John Dunning
“How am I supposed to know where he is? I don’t keep his appointment book.”
“Then how about I go in and get him? I can find him in five minutes.”
“You know the rules,” the guard said.
“Rules are for gooks. How many years have I been coming to this racetrack?”
“That’s all well and good. But if you want to get in today, you’ve gotta have a valid license or get somebody who’s got one to come get you. Come on, man, you know this as well as I do, so maybe you should just go in through the other side and get your license now.”
“Maybe you should eat this.”
I didn’t look: It wasn’t any of my business what Cameron wanted Alvin to eat. A moment passed. Cameron said, “What the hell harm can I do in five lousy minutes?” The guard said, “You can get me fired in five minutes. Is that what you want, sir?” Cameron glared at him and his look said he didn’t care what Alvin did. He turned his head and saw me watching him. “So who’re you and what’re you waiting for?”
“Don’t bother him,” Alvin said. “He’s here to see someone.”
“Well, pardon the hell out of me. Am I bothering you, mister?”
I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was to get in the middle of a running shitfight with these two.
“Who are you here to see?” Cameron said.
“Sir…” Alvin said.
“Don’t give me that sir bullshit. I was racing horses here when you were still pissing your diapers.” To me he said with exaggerated manners, “I only ask because I know everybody who’s raced here in the last twenty-five years. If there’s a problem I might be able to help.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
He bristled. “If that’s how you want it, pal, you just sit there and suit yourself.”
He settled in the corner and the glass began to frost over. Alvin now spoke to him by his first name. “You’re gonna have to leave, Cam. I’m sorry but you’re interfering with my duties.”
Cameron didn’t move.
“I don’t think you want me to call security,” Alvin said.
“Tell you what, Alvin, I’ve got bigger things to do than sit here worrying about you. I don’t care who you call.”
“You know if you get kicked out of here again you might have a helluva time ever gettin’ back in.” Alvin looked at me. “Maybe you should leave as well.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll wait in my car.”
I got up and started for the door. Cameron slid his chair over and blocked my way.
“That’s it, Cameron,” Alvin said. “Get out of the way or I’m calling security.”
“Listen, you,” Cameron said to me. “I tried to do you a favor here and I don’t appreciate it when a deed like that gets thrown back in my face.”
“Don’t start anything with this man, Cameron,” Alvin said.
“What’s he gonna do about it?”
“Look at him and compare him to you. He just might kick you a new asshole.”
“Hey, buddy,” Cameron said: “you really gonna kick me a new asshole?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
I regretted this as soon as I said it. Alvin laughed, making it worse, and Cameron sized me up, seriously now. Then he got up from his chair and stomped out.
“Sorry about that,” Alvin said.
“Hey, stuff happens. For the record, you done good.”
“There won’t be any record. I’m not worried about him filing any complaints.” Alvin passed two fellows into the stable area. “Nice line back there,” he said. “That man is all asshole, all the time. He thinks racing owes him a living.”
“Comeuppance comes hard sometimes.”
He looked at me a little more closely now. “What’d you say your name is?”
I hadn’t said but I did now and we shook hands.
“I don’t know what’s taking Sandy so long,” Alvin said. “I know he’s here. He came through about four-thirty and he hasn’t come out again.”
“Then he’ll come when he can. He’s got a horse running early today, maybe that tied him up. Don’t hassle him, I’ll go wait in my car. I’m the silver Chevy at the edge of the lot.”
I got out of his hair and sat in the car playing the radio with my eyes closed. The next thing I knew, the sound of tapping on my window brought me out of a dream. I opened my eyes and there was a face in my window. Not Sandy’s: This fellow was young. I motioned him around and he took off his raincoat before flopping on the seat beside me.
“I’m Obie Mays. I work for Sandy. Sorry about the delay.”
We shook hands and he said, “Might as well drive down. We’re way over on the backstretch rail near the turn. No sense getting wet.”
He directed me across the street, where Alvin stopped us and came out of his shack for a look. He had me sign in, motioned us through, Obie told me to hang a left, then right, and I pulled up at the barn and parked at the end. I saw Sandy at once as I came under his shedrow. He would be the tall gray-haired fellow standing at a stall door near the middle of the barn. “They had to do an emergency tracheotomy on this old mare,” Obie said softly: “That’s why Sandy couldn’t come for you right away. This horse isn’t worth much but Sandy’s always been partial to her.”
“What happens to her now?”
“We’ll ask around, see who might want her for a lead pony. She’s really a sweet-tempered old gal. If we can’t find anybody for her, I imagine Sandy’s friend Sharon will take her.”
We walked up the barn together and Obie told me the troubled history of this old horse. She had always been a cribber, prone to sucking air. “Usually that’s not a big problem, but she’s been getting worse this year. This morning she went into a sudden choking attack. Sandy had gone on up to the kitchen for coffee and none of us ginneys knew what to do. So here we were, trying like crazy to help this poor horse, and I thought we’d lose her sure. Then we got lucky: Dr. Tate came by in the barn across the way. I saw him and called him over. She’d have died in another few minutes.”
We had reached the stall. A powerful light had been hung there from the top of the door.
A man wearing bloody surgical gloves crossed in front of it: He was a fellow in his sixties with short-cropped gray hair. I glanced over Sandy’s shoulder and saw a sad-looking horse that stood trembling in the back of the stall. Her front legs were coated with drying blood and there were pools of blood in the straw around her head. Implanted high on her neck was a small, round device with a breathing hole in it. I heard Sandy say, “Well, Doc, that’s another one I owe you.”
“That’s what I like about being a vet.” Dr. Tate clapped Sandy on the shoulder. “You get to battle God with God’s own creatures and occasionally you even win one.”
“Make sure you send me a bill this time.”
We moved out of the doorway. The doctor was instructing two ginneys on the removal of the tube, which had to be done every week to keep the passage clear. Sandy had not yet said a word in my direction but now he turned and our eyes met. He nodded slightly and thanked everybody on behalf of his stable and his horse. The tiny crowd broke up and only then, when people were well out of earshot, Sandy said, “Mr. Janeway. Sorry I kept you waiting.” We shook hands and went into a tack room at the end of the barn. He closed the door and nodded toward a chair.
“How’s Sharon?”
“She was fine when I left her yesterday morning.”
The moment stretched. There was a feeling of discomfort between us as if each of us was waiting for the other to get the ball rolling. At last I said, “She tell you why I’m here?”
He nodded. “Good luck. That’s a cold trail you’re chasing. Any reason to think you can pick it up and find out anything?”
“You never know. Sometimes a new pair of eyes can make a big difference.” I shuffled through some notes. “If there’s a victim I usually start with who she knew. Who saw her last, who knew her best…”
“Is that wha
t you think, Candice was a victim?”
“That would be one of the things I’ll have to find out. The possibility’s been raised that Ms. Geiger was murdered. Sharon doesn’t think a lot of effort went into that investigation.”
“I was truly surprised at that; I had no idea she had these doubts.”
“She never told you?”
“Not a word till now. Look, if anybody other than Sharon was raising these questions, I’d put it in the same corner of my mind where I’d keep conspiracy theories in the Kennedy murder; I just wouldn’t give it the time of day. But Sharon’s always been such a steady girl. Even as a kid, her judgment was sound.”
“And she has a certain knack,” I said. “She does seem to sense things.”
He didn’t ask what she sensed or how, and in that gap a minute went by. Through the closed door we heard a horse nicker and a feed tub clatter to the ground. One of the boys yelled, “Dammit, help me out here!” and the voice carried through the wall. Whatever it was it didn’t move Sandy from his perch. He was sitting on a saddle trunk facing the door, deep in thought. Then he said, “How can I help you?”
“If I could start by asking you a few things. Get my bearings, if that’s okay.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“How well did you really know Candice?”
My question knocked him back on his ass and he blinked. I saw his hand tremble and he clutched it with his left hand and still he couldn’t stop fidgeting. His eyes watered and he tried to look away.
“Mr. Standish?”
“My God, does Sharon think I killed her?”
“Did I miss something here? Nobody’s said that.”
He nodded but his face was pale. “Wow,” he said. “As opening questions go, that one’s a lulu. Did Sharon tell you to ask me that?”
“Sharon didn’t tell me to do anything. To me it seemed like a natural place to start.”
He still looked winded, but he forced himself to be calm. “It’s just…I guess it was that word really that set me off. I’ve never been asked that question that way before.”
“I wasn’t aware I had any kind of way with questions.”
But I waited for him to answer it. He gave me a thin little smile and said, “I knew her very well. She was a great woman and I had a lot of affection for her. I don’t know how to describe those days except to say she was a close friend.”
“That was quite a difference in your ages.”
He paled again. Now I had questioned a relationship that hadn’t been in doubt until this moment, and he had trouble looking at me. “She was seven years older than I was,” he acknowledged. “I wouldn’t call that quite a bit. Damn, Janeway, I had no idea you were thinking these things.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything.”
But I am now.
I said, “Did the age difference seem to bother her?”
“Why ask that? What difference does it make?”
“Just that she had always preferred older men.”
“Maybe she was trying to break that pattern. Christ, what do you want from me, I wasn’t a mind reader.” He was looking at the floor as he spoke, and in that moment something had happened. I had had this reaction with others in my police career. Dozens of times I had looked at people and asked the hard question—Did you kill her?—and some of them had melted like wax too close to an open flame. Now it seemed to be happening and I hadn’t asked the question yet.
Then he said, “I loved her,” and the way he said it and the way he looked made me want to believe him, at least for the moment. “I’ve never told this to anyone,” he said. “I sure didn’t intend to say it here and now, but it’s true. Haven’t you ever known a woman like that?”
“Like what?”
“Where you know it’s star-crossed right from the first minute and you still can’t stay away from her. I’m talking about a woman who can make you dream about her years after she’s gone…and when you first met her all she did was say hello and your storm warnings went up.”
“Sure, I can understand that.”
“I thought I was ready for this,” he said. “Sharon called and told me who you are and what you’re doing, and I thought, I can deal with this now; I can answer the man’s questions. But then you come in here and ask me how well I knew her, and I feel a lump in my throat and I can barely talk; I’m right back in those days, my hands tremble when I think of her, and I don’t know what I can tell you.”
He tried for a smile but it came up short. “God, I just loved her,” he said again. “When she died, all the joy went out of my life. She took that away when she went.”
“She seems to have had that effect on more than one man.”
“Can I ask you for a favor? Is it possible to keep this between us guys?”
“That’s going to be a tough one, Sandy.”
“I know it is. I hear what you’re saying.”
“You’re asking me not to tell Sharon. But she gave me a chunk of money to come out here and uncover some facts.”
“I have no right to ask any favors. I understand what kind of position that puts you in.”
“I could leave it to you to tell her,” I said. “That’s the best I can do.”
“I don’t know if that makes it easier or harder. It does change things. This is something I have never talked about with Sharon. I just assumed that’s how she wanted it. And now…”
He put up his hands in a surrender motion. “I loved her mother from the first day HR brought her to the racetrack, just after her father died. I remember it like it was yesterday. Mr. Ritchey died and HR began squiring her around within a few weeks.”
He looked at the ceiling and in that moment I could see how vulnerable he was. A fool could see it. I could ask him almost anything now and maybe another little piece of unwanted truth might come out. I could sense it back there in his head, down in his heart. He had lived with a ghost for a long time and now here it was in a stranger’s question that hadn’t even been asked yet.
“Sharon has never mentioned this,” he said. “She has no idea…”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
His eyes opened wide. “Did she say something?”
“Just that you’d be worth talking to. That you’ll help me get around.”
“I will…hell, I’ll be happy to do that…no matter what you decide. But you know…”
I cocked my eyebrow, waiting for him to finish his thought. He said, “That kind of comment from her might mean anything or nothing at all.”
“Sharon’s a clever young woman,” I said. “All I’m saying is, don’t be too surprised if she’s figured out some things on her own.”
“She’s never said a word to that effect. Not to me.”
“Maybe she’s too much of a lady to bring it up. It’s a touchy subject, maybe she’s waiting for you to say something.”
“Yeah, tell me how touchy it is.” He nodded. “Anyway, you’ve made your point.”
“So did you have an affair with her mother?”
I tried to say this kindly—a soft question from a man who might have been in that same boat himself once or twice. A woman he absolutely shouldn’t touch. Consent implied in her words. The raging hormones of youth. The next logical thought wafted up from somewhere: “Are you Sharon’s father?” I asked, and his face went ashen.
“Damn, you do get right to the point, don’t you?”
“I know it’s a sticky question but it had to be asked.”
“It was only for a short time,” he said. “We were only together…a little while.”
“Once is all it takes.” I looked at him steadily, without wavering, with what I hoped was a fair piece of understanding. But he wouldn’t meet my eyes, so all that effort was lost.
“How’s the timing?” I said.
He nodded to the wall. Yes, it could’ve been him.
He looked up at me: another mighty effort to make eye contact. “I’ve thought of that almost every day,” he said
, looking away.
“And you still think Sharon doesn’t realize what might have happened?”
“Then why didn’t she ever say anything?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t, not while the old man was alive. But then he lived so long it had become our way, what we were.” At last he forced himself to look at me. “I was very young. Candice was…”
I waited.
“My first,” he said. “In a way it was like that for both of us. Her first real fling.”
I thought this was doubtful, but I said, “I’m not here to pass judgment, Sandy.”
“But now you’ve got to tell Sharon. I suppose she’s absolutely got to know?”
“There are ways to find out today. Tests that didn’t exist thirty years ago.”
“Jesus.” He quaked at the thought. “How much time will you give me to decide?”
“It’s not your decision to make. It might come up any minute and I can’t lie to her.”
“So the clock is already ticking.”
“I think so. She needs…”
He groped for a word and I found it for him. “Closure.” This is an old word with a modern meaning that I loathe and never use except in sarcasm. He stared at the wall and didn’t notice.
“Of course she does,” he said finally. “She needs closure. God knows she deserves that, and I do want to help her. If you doubt that, remember this. If it ever comes out that I got you in here under false pretenses, I could be in real trouble with the stewards.”
“I won’t tell and I’m sure Sharon won’t. I’ll work my shift like anybody else.”
He looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, I’m running into a time problem, I’ve got two guests coming out to visit. Helluva day for it, but I’ve got a horse in the second race.”
“I’ll be fine here.”
“We’ll get you a license this afternoon,” he said. “Count on Obie for everything, he’s solid. You can bed down with my boys, if that’s what you want. I’ll put you on as a hot walker. That would leave you time to poke around.”
